‘I don’t know the reason for the restriction, miss.’
A small mountain of discarded possessions was forming in the car park. Evacuees were allowed twenty kilos each of personal items, the limit rigidly enforced on departure. Armed soldiers patrolled the mountain to discourage looters, but people were still picking over it, diving in when the troopers turned their backs. The sight of a fullsize upright piano that had somehow come to rest halfway up the mound intrigued Annabelle.
She heard Weaver say, ‘You’re kidding yourselves. Trying to censor this? Hasn’t anyone told you people about personal video cameras, phone cameras? This sort of stuff gets out, for Christ’s sake.’
‘Okay, then,’ said the major, growing impatient. ‘So what’s first on the list? Where do you want to go?’
Annabelle saw that they’d get nowhere if they wanted to stay at the airport. And in truth, this was her first paid reporting job. She’d gone straight from university to the anchor’s desk and was feeling out of her depth. ‘I’d like to drive around, get a feel for the situation.’
‘Sure. Let’s get a feel for the girlie bar situation. Are they restricted?’ Weaver was angry. The people in the bus looked at him as if he’d said the c-word in church during a lull in the service. Indeed, there was a sudden and eerie silence. Something had changed. It was the rain beating on the roof of the bus. It had ceased and the setting sun was throwing shafts of light clean through the cloud cover. Despite the heat and humidity, a chill turned Annabelle’s skin to gooseflesh …we’re pretty safe as long as the monsoon’s active.
The arrival of the sunshine was accompanied by the sudden staccato bark of an automatic weapon followed by the screams of women and children. ‘What now?’ said the major, bending to look out the heavily fogged windows and wiping a section clear with his hand. A fat young soldier with a baby face clattered heavily up the bus’s stairs, rocking the whole vehicle. ‘Major, we’ve got a problem here,’ he said, with red cheeks his grandmother would have been proud of.
‘What?’ asked the major, grabbing his Steyr.
‘The crowd’s charging the departure lounge, sir. And the military museum, sir. It’s been looted.’
‘Shit,’ the major said as he left the bus, the young soldier following.
‘What’s the problem?’ said one of the soldiers in the bus to another, loud enough to be overheard. ‘The war museum – it’s just old Second World War stuff, isn’t it?’
‘Yeah,’ replied his comrade, ‘plus a whole heap of weapons from the old government weapons buy-back program are held there – AR-10s, shotguns, MP-5s, Rugers, Armalite AR-50s…’
‘You’re kidding. Civilians had that stuff?’
‘Yeah, they were at war with the crocodiles.’
Someone chuckled.
The bus rocked again as Baby Face made a return appearance. ‘Excuse me, miss?’ Annabelle turned. ‘If you TV people would follow me? I’ll take you into town. To the Novotel. Something’s come up and the major’s asked me to step in. Grab your gear and we’ll go now.’
‘Novotel. I’ve never stayed at a Novotel. They have a bar there, don’t they?’ Weaver asked no one in particular. With the restrictions in place, he sensed Darwin was a dead end, a nothing story, and he was already putting it down as another dopey assignment dreamed up by some network nancy. ‘Novotel, Novotel. It sounds like some Seventh Day Adventist hotel concept.’ He knew that wasn’t the case, but if he couldn’t do his job, at least he could keep himself amused by giving the authorities a dose of the shits.
Baby Face, Annabelle, Weaver and the cameraman stepped out into the humid sunshine, between two of the light armoured vehicles, and onto the asphalt of the airport parking lot. The sun was rapidly burning a very big and dangerous hole in the cloudbank. Beyond the concrete barricades ringing the bus, a mass of humanity swirled, trying to get into the airport terminal. A steady stream of Qantas jets and Hercules C-130s were taking off and landing, and the air smelled of body odour, steamed bitumen and kerosene.
‘What was the shooting about, General?’ asked Weaver, now doing his best to get up as many noses as possible.
The big kid didn’t bite. ‘I’m a lance corporal, sir,’ he said politely.
‘Sorry.’
‘It sounded like a couple of Steyrs, sir – our rifles. A few shots were fired in the air earlier today when the crowd got nasty. The volley got their attention all right but the slugs came back to earth. Killed one person, wounded another. We’re under strict orders not to let that happen again.’
‘Can we report that?’ asked Annabelle.
‘Anything you want to report will have to be written up first and submitted for approval,’ said Baby Face, his cheeks wobbling as he spoke, his words overwhelmed by the noise of a 747 flying low overhead. Annabelle looked up as it passed and wondered how much damage a few randomly fired bullets could do to a 747, and instantly purged the thought from her brain lest thinking it actually made it happen.
‘So, who’s doing the crowd control?’ Weaver asked.
‘Mostly 5/7 Battalion, part of the regular army brigade posted hereabouts. And we’ve got a company of Army Reserves. Weekend warriors, and some of them aren’t as disciplined as they should be.’
The army had a compound within the airport parking lot for its vehicles, the space kept free of the citizenry by more concrete bollards and armed troopers. Baby Face walked up to one of the Land Rovers and opened the rear hatch. The cameraman and Weaver hoisted the battered aluminium boxes that carried their laptops, two satellite vones and a satellite fax and colour printer into the available space, and threw their backpacks plus Annabelle’s on top.
Only two news crews were permitted inside the restricted area in and around Darwin, ANTV and the national broadcaster, the ABC. The ABC had the full outside broadcast truck, but the satellite vone and peripherals could do everything the truck could do, only the vone pictures were degraded somewhat. Weaver, as producer, the Man in Charge, was fine with that because it gave their reports a more dangerous, in-the-war-zone look. Annabelle took the front passenger seat beside the lance corporal while Weaver and the cameraman sat behind. ‘Do you want the air-con on, miss?’ said the soldier.
‘Yes, thanks.’
‘Got any Billy Joel?’ said Weaver.
Annabelle turned to look behind her and give Weaver a smile. She didn’t think much of his taste in music but she was warming to his fuck-you attitude, if only because he spread it around with equal and unfettered favour. She also noticed the Land Rover on their tail, on account of the truck’s grille was almost in the back seat. ‘I think we’re being followed,’ she said.
‘Armed escort, miss.’
‘Yeah, so what do we need one of those for, again? I mean, we only have to beat off one other network and we don’t need guns for that.’
‘Looters mainly, sir. There were quite a few gangs on the streets before the army moved in.’
‘And now?’ asked Annabelle.
‘Mostly under control now.’
Weaver had been around long enough to know that ‘mostly’ meant mostly not. He shrugged, letting it pass. Maybe they’d get a good story from Darwin after all.
A burst of noise came through the radio speakers. It sounded only vaguely reminiscent of English. ‘What are they saying?’ Annabelle asked.
‘ARCOM wants all PUBCOMs to present at DARCON asap.’
‘Right,’ said Annabelle.
‘I think the lady means can we hear the translation,’ Weaver said from the back seat.
‘Pardon, miss. We hear the acronyms so much, they sound kinda normal after a while. Army Command wants all public communications – you guys, basically – to come to Darwin Control now, if not sooner.’
‘So DARCON is the Novotel?’ Annabelle asked.
‘That’s right. You know, the Seventh Day Adventist retreat?’ said Weaver, keeping himself entertained.
‘Yes, miss.’ The soldier addressed himself to Annabelle, ignoring Weave
r.
The two-car convoy crawled cautiously along the highway, which had become a barely moving snarl of trucks, utes and four-by-fours heading south beneath a pall of black diesel smoke. Here and there, brawls had broken out involving sometimes up to a dozen people, due to perceived slights induced by alcohol. There were police cars amongst the confusion, but they were clearly overwhelmed by the task at hand. The cameraman had a micro digital recorder in his hand, committing the exodus to hard disk.
‘Annabelle, I prepared these notes for you on the plane up. A bit on the history of Darwin, background, that sort of thing,’ said Weaver, with his producer’s hat back on. Annabelle Gilbert had to be properly briefed before she stood in front of the camera. ‘Might be worth skimming before we meet DARCON the ARCON, great warrior from the outer galaxy of somewhere or other. We’ll file straight after, when we know what they’ll let us say.’
‘Okay,’ said Annabelle, flicking through the five-page summary.
‘Also, I reckon a good backdrop might be the deck gun of the USS Peary, with Port Darwin behind it. It’s all in there,’ he said, motioning at the report. ‘The Peary sank when Darwin was bombed in the last war.’
Annabelle Gilbert put the brief down. It was good and thorough. The background it contained would form the basis of all her reports.
‘And, as chance would have it, the USS Peary monument is virtually across the road from our Adventist friends at the Novotel.’
Annabelle knew Tom didn’t like Barry Weaver. He’d called the producer a pain in the butt. And indeed, he wasn’t well liked by the staff around the office. She suddenly realised that the only people Weaver got on with were the people he’d worked with out in the field, where it really counted. The longer she spent with him on this assignment, the more she could see why. He was still a sleaze, albeit one with a blunt charm. Barry Weaver would be something – another thing – she and Tom would have to agree to disagree on. The thought of Tom swung her mood from tough reporter to pathetic glob of wet tissue paper. Wherever you are, Tom, I hope you’re okay…
Flores, Indonesia
Duat and Hendra both woke from a sleep filled with horrors, yet some of their strength had returned. They wandered through the encampment by torchlight noticing for the first time the stench of death hanging in the night air. It seemed that many people had died, either from the poison, or from a self-administered bullet when the madness from the VX-induced dreams became too much to bear. The suicide squads had been virtually annihilated. No one remained in any fit state to take Babu Islam’s message beyond the encampment. Hendra’s young protégé, Unang, had also died, but he’d lived long enough to see his whole family perish in the frightening nightmarish way common to VX exposure.
Duat and Hendra returned to Rahim’s quarters to conduct a thorough search in the hope of finding more antidote, but there was none. They turned next to the Internet in a quest for additional supplies but, in an irony that escaped neither himself nor Hendra, all available stocks of atropine appeared to have been cornered by the Indonesian and Australian governments as they waited for the terrorist weapon to burst over their cities.
Duat sat behind a computer terminal and tried to order his mind. If he were to survive, he knew that he must leave the encampment as soon as possible because neither he nor Hendra were aware of the source of the poisoning. More than likely it was in something widely distributed throughout the encampment – the water, the rice, or possibly even the air itself. The drums that contained the VX were stored in Rahim’s quarters. They had examined them and their seals appeared to be intact. It was a mystery. Perhaps Rahim himself had accidentally poisoned the encampment, the white powder having dulled his oncesharp mind.
After several mistakes Duat finally managed to control his fingers well enough to tap the correct Internet address into the bar. The site flashed onto the screen. He keyed in his personal identity code, the number of his favourite Sura from the Qur’an. The screen went blank momentarily before returning. Duat blinked at what he saw. Surely not? He re-entered his code, refreshing the screen in the process, and received the same response. He read the words that flashed red in French, Italian and English across the page: ‘Account terminated. Contact bank administration.’ Duat swallowed as the implications of this dawned on him. The account had been closed, the funds frozen. How could that be? Only one other person knew his account number, the Australian financier. That could only mean one thing: that the infidel had been captured and had talked. Duat realised then how much damage the sickness that had descended on the camp had caused. For almost a week he had lain in his bed, not caring about the world, and that was time he would never win back. If the capture of Kalas was anything to go by, much had probably happened that he should have been aware of. He connected to CNN.com and tapped ‘Kalas’ into the site search engine. The headlines told him the worst: ‘Raid nabs terrorist moneyman’, and then, ‘Terrorist financier cracks’. Duat disconnected from the server, his heart racing. How long did they have? A day? Hours?
‘Duat, good news at last,’ said Hendra, folding a meteorological printout on the bench. ‘Allah has given us a break in the weather.’
‘Then we must launch,’ said Duat. ‘Now.’
Bangkok, Thailand
Warrant Officer Tom Wilkes felt as if he were on some wild theme park ride with a never-ending ticket. After Myanmar, the Eurocopter had flown them to Bangkok, where Jenny Tadzic had disembarked with the agents they’d rescued from General Trip’s holiday camp. There, a Royal Australian Air Force C-130 was waiting for him and Monroe on the apron, its turboprops spinning and a clearance to take off granted. The LM stood on the aircraft’s ramp motioning them to get a hurry on. Wilkes and Monroe jogged over.
‘Hey, boss, s’up?’ Lance Corporal Gary Ellis walked down the ramp towards them, grinning.
‘What the hell are you doing here?’ said Wilkes, just a touch confused.
‘Hey, that’s the kind of welcome I was getting from the missus just before we called it quits,’ Ellis yelled over the noise of the Herc’s spinning props. ‘The rest of our blokes are in Jakarta, waiting for us.’
‘Jakarta?’ Wilkes was surprised, and curious. ‘What gives?’
‘Those coordinates you sent back from Myanmar, boss. Someone in Canberra had the bright idea to put us on standby in case you turned up with the goods. We’ve been hanging out for a few days with the Kopassus. Do you know a Captain Mahisa? I hope so, ’cause he says he knows you.’
The LM motioned the men to take their seats on the bench that ran down the plane’s fuselage, and buckle in.
‘The coordinates put the terrorist digs on the southern end of Flores. That means the target is more likely to be Darwin. Jakarta falls outside the drone’s standard range. Just. But the terrorists could have modified the thing, so no one’s taking any chances. Also, the weather looks like it’s going to come good any day now, and you know what that means…People are shitting themselves like you wouldn’t believe.’
‘So what are we doing about it?’
‘Kick freckle, boss. A dawn HALO drop. Like, in half a dozen hours.’
‘Bullshit,’ said Wilkes in disbelief.
‘Nah, fair dinkum.’
Ellis talked Wilkes and Monroe through the essentials of the planned high altitude low opening parachute insertion. They’d be jumping out the back of an Indonesian C-130 with the Kopassus, possibly men from the same battalion Wilkes and his men had fought against less than six months ago – Ellis had been reluctant to enquire. The irony of the partnership Wilkes found hard to shake. But that was the world they were living in: today’s enemy, tomorrow’s best bud. He felt the scar on his cheek and snorted. A Kopassus bullet had given it to him. He’d completely forgotten about it, probably because the scar had stopped itching and he hadn’t been in front of too many mirrors recently. Wounds heal – just like relationships. The Hercules accelerated down the runway with the usual deafening, high-pitched scream transferred into its passengers’ ear
holes. Wilkes sat back, squashed plugs into his ears and closed his eyes.
‘Hey, sleeping beauty. Rise and shine,’ said Atticus Monroe what seemed like only seconds later, shaking Wilkes roughly.
‘What?’ said Wilkes, momentarily disoriented.
The slight nose-up attitude of the C-130 lowered along with a drop in the engine note. They’d begun to descend.
Flores, Indonesia
Hendra and Duat hurried to prepare the Sword of Allah for launch. The sky overhead was an infinite black. A night launch was something Hendra hadn’t prepared himself for and he began to think only of what might go wrong. He fired up the generator while Duat opened the double doors. Halogen lights blazed over the drone, chasing away the shadows. The aircraft was painted a flat pale grey and seemed to absorb the light, trapping it so that its surfaces and edges were poorly defined.
Duat ran his fingers across the nose, and again admired the seamless repairs carried out by Hendra on the damaged wing and fuselage. The moment had finally arrived, Duat said to himself, mixed emotions jostling for ascendency. Somehow, the group’s isolation, together with the death of Kadar Al-Jahani and the poisoning of the encampment, had subtly changed Duat’s sense of purpose. The weapon had begun as a tool that would rally Indonesia’s faithful and awaken them to their duty. But now, Duat just wanted revenge for his own failure. The coordinated strategy devised by himself and Kadar was in tatters, poisoned by circumstances and VX contamination. The Sword of Allah at his fingertips was all that remained. He would unsheathe it and plunge it into the heart of the unbelievers.
Hendra directed Duat to a drum of aviation fuel carefully sealed against moisture, and showed him how to use the hand pump.
‘How far will it fly?’ Duat asked as he worked the pump.
‘The propeller is slightly longer than standard and I have increased the size of its fuel tanks. It will fly a little faster than it did before, and a lot further. With the wind as it is predicted, around one thousand four hundred miles.’ Hendra took the updated weather forecast from his back pocket and spread it out on the bench.
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